Apologies if this comes across as an incoherent mumbo jumbo.
I was thinking about a few things earlier to do with this device. Once again, apologies if this has all been discussed before.
I'm sure I read somewhere that the electrical stimulation was set approximately in the region of the specific user's ability to feel it (if this is wrong, stop reading here
). This is obviously beneficial when you're running a placebo controlled study, as you don't want users to be able to immediately identify the active treatment because they can feel the little electrodes going bzzzt on their skin and none with the placebo.
With a weak electrical stimuli, electrode placement becomes absolutely critical as you may not be stimulating the target nerves enough with such a weak impulse. If the power of the electrode is increased, you may either increase the effectiveness of the treatment or stimulate the nerve even if your electrode placement isn't exact.
Most people don't like the feeling of electrical stimulation as it can somewhat feel similar to pins and needles at the treatment site and so some of the participants may have set their stimulation level quite low. I'm sure there's objective measurement data that Dr. Shore's team can/already have draw
a conclusion on with how specific respondents had their electrodes set up, i.e. can you group low respondents into a range of electrode power and perhaps those that had a greater response into another settings range. The fact the stimulation was removed in the sham suggests to me this is the most important part of the device.
I hope that when you sign up to buy the device you agree to sharing your setting and subsequent appointment data on how your tinnitus has reduced with Auricle so they can do some design of experiments level statistical analysis to target the most effective settings in future.